AgentPAM.ai

Competitive comparison

Who we compare against,
on what, and where we lose

This page lists the places we are behind. A table we win outright is marketing, not evaluation material.

Based on each vendor's public documentation, as of 2026-07.

Anything we cannot positively verify from public sources is recorded as “not documented publicly” rather than “unsupported” — that is both honest and much harder to attack.

⚠️ Marked items postdate the underlying research knowledge cutoff (2026-01) and must be re-verified against the original source before use in external material.

Layer 0

First, disentangle: there are three different things called “AI agent security”

The loudest noise in this market is these three being treated as one.

LayerWhat it isWho does itSecurity value
① An MCP server wrapped around your own product“Chat with your PAM”Delinea / BeyondTrust / CyberArk / Keeper / 1Password all have oneZero. It is a UX feature for security analysts
② Agent discovery and governanceIGA re-pointed at an agent inventoryAstrix / CyberArk / Saviynt / Microsoft Agent 365Counts things; does not intercept
③ Runtime brokering of agent → resource accessAuthenticate it, authorize this specific call, inject a credential the agent never sees, record the callTeleport / Aembit / Boundary+Vault / StrongDM / Saviynt AAGActual control
Layer 0AgentPAM competes only in ③, and states plainly that we do not do ①.

The dividing line

The deepest dividing line: when does policy apply

This is the key to every difference that follows — it explains who we actually differ from far better than any feature list.

SchoolWhen policy appliesRepresentativeStructural blind spot
① Inventory graphAfter the fact (review / ticket)Astrix, Entro, Veza, Clutch, TokenCan tell you the agent holds a credential; cannot stop it being used
② Ephemeral privilegeAt the moment of issuanceAstrix ACP, Britive, P0, Oasis, KeeperCompletely blind between issuance and expiry — an agent making 400 tool calls under one token is invisible throughout
③ Cryptographic workload identityAt issuance (strong attestation)SPIFFE/SPIRE, Defakto, KeycardNeeds a trustworthy attester; very hard to establish on a laptop
④ Inline brokerOn every callAgentPAM, Teleport, AembitThe only school that can enforce per tool call; the cost is having to sit in the path

Astrix's own site defines its Deploy pillar as (verbatim, astrix.security/why-astrix/):

Provision secure-by-design AI agents with short-lived credentials, just-in-time, precisely scoped access, and policy at creation.

policy at creation — enforce when the credential is minted, then step out of the data path. That is not a defect; it is a different product category.

AstrixAgentPAM
When policy appliesAt creationOn every call
Of 400 tool calls, how many are visible0400
Parameter-level constraints (e.g. refund ≤ $500)Not documented publicly✅
Sits in the data pathNoYes

Capability matrix

Capability matrix

scrolls horizontally

DimensionAgentPAMTeleportCyberArkDelineaAstrix
Architectural school④ Inline broker④ Inline broker②+① hybrid④ (StrongDM lineage)①+②
Fully private / air-gapped✅ Design premise, zero outbound callback✅ Self-hostableDepends on product lineDepends on product lineNot documented publicly
Containerized, hardenable delivery✅ OCI, non-root, read-only rootfs✅No public detailNo public detailNot documented publicly
Requires replacing your access path❌ Plugs into the gateway you have⚠️ Traffic must route through Teleport⚠️ Ships its own AI Agent Gateway—❌ Not in the path
MCP stdio support✅✅ Child-process relay + live protocol inspectionNot documented publiclyNot documented publiclyDiscovery only (inventories MCP servers)
Per-tool-call authorization✅✅ glob/regex, deny-first, default denySemantics not documented publiclySemantics not documented publicly❌
Parameter-level authorization✅ e.g. refund.amount ≤ 500Not documented publiclyNot documented publiclyNot documented publicly❌
Human + agent dual principal✅ sub=human, act=agentNo blended identity documentedNot documented publicly✅ StrongDM ID has a human sponsor chain❌
Credential never reaches the agent✅✅ JWT header injectionClaims task-scopedNo public detail❌ Credential is given to the agent
Monotonic sub-delegation (forced attenuation)✅Not documented publiclyNot documented publiclyNot documented publiclyNot documented publicly
CAEP/SSF mid-session revocation✅Not documented publiclyNot documented publiclyNot documented publiclyNot documented publicly
Credential bound to task lifecycle✅ Void when the task endsNot documented publiclyClaims “automatic revocation”Not documented publiclyNot documented publicly
Vendor-neutral audit schema✅ Aligned to OCSF + W3C Trace ContextStructured audit (proprietary format)ProprietaryProprietaryProprietary
Agent discovery / shadow agents⚠️ V1 wedge, shallower than specialists⚠️ Limited✅ Strong✅ Strong✅ Strongest (category benchmark)
Maturity / production validation⚠️ Early✅ Years in production✅ Large-scale deployments✅ Large-scale deployments✅ Mature
SSH / K8s / DB and other classic protocols❌ Not covered✅ Strong✅ Strong✅ Strong❌
Enterprise integration breadth / machine identity depth⚠️ EarlyMedium✅ Strong (Venafi machine identity)✅ Strong✅ Strong (broad connector coverage)
Threat detection & response (ITDR/ADR)❌ Not attempted❌✅✅✅ ADR™ / Non-Human ITDR

The last five rows are the honesty rows. They do not get softened.

Vendor by vendor

Where we credit each competitor, and what our difference actually is

Teleport

The strongest engineering comparison, and self-hostable
What it does well

MCP is proxied at the Application Service layer; stdio servers are launched as child processes with stdin/stdout relayed and live protocol inspection; SSE/HTTP is proxied with TLS validation plus JWT header injection (the agent never holds the upstream token); tbot / Machine ID issues short-lived X.509; hardware root of trust; per-tool RBAC via mcp.tools literal/glob/regex with deny rules evaluated first, so denied calls fail at the authorization layer and never reach the server; structured per-tool-call audit including input parameters and denial reasons; adopts both MCP and SPIFFE.

Honest observation

Their own stated limitation: per-tool JIT collapses to server-level grants in practice. Other publicly visible gaps: cluster infrastructure is heavyweight for a single laptop; historically focused on developer infrastructure (SSH/K8s/DB) and weaker on SaaS / business applications; requires routing all traffic through Teleport — real adoption friction.

Our difference

Our difference is not “we are stronger”, it is “we do not ask you to change your access path.” Teleport asks you to converge access onto Teleport; we plug into the gateway you are already running. Plus: human + agent dual principal, parameter-level policy, monotonic sub-delegation, and the CAEP revocation loop.

CyberArk

Discovery and governance are real; the gateway half is thin on public detail
What it does well

Secure AI Agents (announced 2025-11, GA 2025-12 ⚠️) — agent discovery, secure agent access, real-time threat detection, lifecycle and compliance management. The product blog describes an AI Agent Gateway granting task-scoped permissions with automatic revocation, connecting via an MCP server, and logging agent actions including the specific database queries executed. Discovery covers AWS Bedrock and Copilot Studio. Structural strengths: machine identity depth (Venafi), installed base, analyst position.

Honest observation

The discovery / governance half is real and shipping; the gateway half is thin on published detail — no list of supported resource types, no documented per-tool authorization semantics, no architecture document. A detail worth noting: the term “AI Agent Gateway” does not appear in the press release at all, only in the product blog, which suggests that part was not settled at announcement.

Our difference

We do not compete with their discovery capability. The difference is in enforcement semantics: per-tool, down to parameters, dual-principal, revocable — none of which currently has a corresponding description in public documentation.

Delinea

Their standards stack collides with ours, and that is good news
What it does well

Acquired Fastpath in 2024; ⚠️ closed the StrongDM acquisition 2026-03. StrongDM brings the most technically credible independent infrastructure-access capability in this space, and StrongDM ID uses DPoP (RFC 9449) + Token Exchange (RFC 8693) with a human sponsor chain — the same standards stack AgentPAM chose. Strong on PAM breadth and existing enterprise footprint.

Honest observation

Post-acquisition integration is still in progress; packaging is not public.

Our difference

When a large incumbent independently converges on the same standards choices we made, that is evidence the choice is right rather than idiosyncratic. Our difference is in deployment shape (air-gap first) and MCP per-tool semantics, not in standards selection.

Astrix

The best discovery product, but not in the data path
What it does well

Three pillars: Discover / Secure / Deploy. Real-time inventory of every AI agent, MCP server, and NHI; shadow agent discovery; ADR™ and Non-Human ITDR; lifecycle management from provisioning to decommissioning. On discovery specifically, it is the category benchmark.

Honest observation

Its enforcement point is policy at creation — mint short-lived, JIT, precisely scoped credentials, then step out of the data path. It does not make a decision on each tool call, so it cannot see what happens after issuance. ⚠️ Now acquired by Cisco (the site header currently brands as “Astrix Cisco”). This confirms a larger pattern: almost everything bought in this wave was a discovery / posture product — acquirers were buying inventory capability, not enforcement capability.

Our difference

We are not a replacement for Astrix; we are closer to complementary. It answers “which agents exist in my environment and what does each hold”; we answer “may this specific call happen, with which credential, leaving what evidence”. An honest framing: use something like Astrix to get counted, then use AgentPAM to get controlled.

Where we lose

Where we are currently behind

Written here, not hidden.

Maturity
We are early. Teleport has years of production validation; CyberArk / Delinea have large-scale deployments.
Classic protocol coverage
Session proxying and recording for SSH / K8s / databases / RDP — we do not do this at all. If you need it, buy Teleport or a classic PAM.
Enterprise integration breadth and machine identity depth
CyberArk's Venafi certificate / machine identity capability and Astrix's connector coverage are not something we will match in the near term.
Threat detection & response (ITDR / ADR)
We do not do behavioural analytics or threat response.
Our answer to “you are too early”It is not a defence, it is a narrowing of scope: we do exactly one thing — control AI agent access to sensitive APIs through the gateway you already run — rather than replacing your entire access layer.

Discovery cohort

The discovery cohort: seven vendors, not one of them in the data path

⚠️ Every position below comes from reading each vendor's own site directly in 2026-07 — first-hand sources.

VendorStatusSelf-positioningIn the data pathHolds / issues credentialsMCP authorization
Astrix⚠️ Acquired by CiscoDiscover / Secure / Deploy (ACP)❌❌ Credential goes to the agentInventories MCP servers only
Entro Security⚠️ Acquired by SailPointNHI discovery and secrets governance❌❌—
Veza⚠️ Acquired by ServiceNowPermission graph (who can access what)❌❌—
Natoma⚠️ Acquired by SnowflakeNHI governance, now narrowing to Snowflake data❌❌—
Oasis SecurityIndependent, ⚠️ $120M Series B“Agentic Access Management”❌ off-path❌ Orchestrates existing identity systems❌ Zero mentions on the entire site
Token SecurityIndependentAll five pillars are discovery / posture / ITDR❌❌⚠️ Has an MCP server, but its purpose is “chat with the product”
Clutch SecurityIndependentIdentity Lineage® Graph❌❌❌
Most worth monitoring

Oasis — closest to us in positioning, furthest in mechanism

Their site does use the category term Agentic Access Management, along with “Understand agent intent and enforce time-bound access”, “Access control that understands intent, not just static roles and permissions”, and “Automate Agent Identity Provisioning — Give every AI agent the right access, only for as long as it needs it, automatically.” That sounds a great deal like us. But the site carries no proxy, gateway, credential-injection, or request-interception language anywhere; the model orchestrates existing identity systems (IdP, vault, SaaS) rather than generating credentials itself; connectors are agentless API integrations; and there is not a single mention of MCP on the entire site. This is School ②'s advanced form — intent-aware enforcement at issuance time — not School ④. If anyone moves from ① to ④, they are the most likely.

Layer ① evidence

Token Security — the textbook “chat with your platform” example

All five pillars (Continuous Discovery / Lifecycle Management / Security Posture Management / ITDR / AI-Driven Automation & Remediation) are discovery and posture. Their Token MCP Server, verbatim from the site: “Designed to be consumed from your tool of choice… enable you to ask questions from your favorite chat application (e.g., Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini)” — that is exactly the layer ① described at the top of this page, and it protects nothing. The platform neither issues nor holds credentials; agents obtain them from their native sources (cloud IAM, secrets managers).

The selling point is the ceiling

Clutch — the selling point states their own boundary

Verbatim from the site: “Connect to any cloud provider, SaaS app, vault, code repo, or endpoint in minutes. 100+ integrations, API-based, agentless. No infrastructure changes required.” That is an excellent deployment selling point, and it is precisely why it cannot enforce: no infrastructure change = not in the path = cannot block. Their Identity Lineage® Graph — connecting every entity back to its origin, the people behind it, where it is stored, what consumes it, and what it can reach — is genuinely strong capability within this cohort. They also mention a progressive transition to ephemeral credentials, which is the closest thing to enforcement anyone here says — but it is still roadmap language, not a current mechanism.

What this section concludesSeven discovery-cohort vendors; zero brokering agent access at runtime; zero implementing the MCP authorization specification. That is not a criticism of their work — they are strong in their own categories, and the discovery depth of Astrix and Clutch is beyond what we can do in the near term. It is a category boundary: inventory and posture products create value by seeing, enforcement products create value by stopping, and the two sit in fundamentally different architectural positions. So our relationship with these seven is complementary, not substitutive. An honest procurement recommendation: use them to inventory your assets, use AgentPAM to control the calls.

Structural advantages

Our genuinely structural advantages

#AdvantageWhy it is structurally hard for competitors to follow
1Fully private / air-gapped⚠️ Microsoft Entra Agent ID + Agent 365 bundle per-seat with M365, and the cloud is the premise; Cloudflare MCP Portals is edge SaaS. The two strongest competitors do not exist inside an air-gapped room.
2No replacement of the access pathOn gateways that support external AS delegation (4 of 12 measured), adoption is configuration, not code — runtime-proven on agentgateway as a single YAML block. The rest go through the co-primary external-PDP path, which covers more of them
3Enforcement on every call, down to parametersAgainst schools ①② (Astrix and similar) this is an architectural difference, not a feature gap
4Human + agent dual principal on every callConsistent with the modelling consensus in AuthZEN COAZ / Entra facet claims / WIMSE
5Monotonic sub-delegation + CAEP revocation loop + task lifecycle binding + neutral audit schemaNo shipping product in public sources implements all four
On the “specification moat” — a claim we have corrected

We previously claimed here that the spec requires an external AS and forbids the gateway from holding upstream credentials. Checked word for word against the specification text, both were wrong, and both are now corrected. What the spec actually says:

  1. RFC 9728 is a hard MUST, and authorization_servers must contain at least one AS — but the Roles section states plainly: It may be hosted with the resource server or a separate entity. The AS is allowed to be the gateway itself, and most gateways already do exactly that.
  2. The token pass-through prohibition does exist (MUST NOT pass through the token it received from the MCP client, identical across three revisions from 2025-06-18) — but the paragraph it sits in also says the gateway may act as an OAuth client to upstream APIs. The spec expects the gateway to hold its own upstream credentials; only relaying the client's inbound token is forbidden.

The spec gives us a position it permits, not a position it excavated for us. Spec conformance does not stop gateway vendors from being their own AS — in fact most already are. Our moat is not in the specification text. It is in capability.